


Monsters & Bonfires

by lucius_complex



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Paedophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucius_complex/pseuds/lucius_complex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alfred wishes that he had anticipated Bruce Wayne’s needs a little better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monsters & Bonfires

 

Monsters and Bonfires   
  
*   
  
You were always a beautiful child. Artless, in a way that we think children are supposed to be but seldom really are. You were so beautiful, and you had everything. And so silent; you communicated your thoughts through the light in your eyes, through shyly drawn smiles.   
  
I should know, to my everlasting regret. I was there on the night you lost them, and I lost the only visible reminder to reign in the monster that resides within me; the one I prayed, I  _pray_ that you will never encounter or come to understand, even in empathy.   
  
Lustful, lurking beast that I am, however, your father had given me a second chance to live right, and to the best of my abilities, I would.   
  
At least on the outside.   
  
I have always wondered if he worried in his last moments, knowing the sort of creature he had knowingly left you with. If for the first time in his life, as he laid out in the snow while his lifeblood drained away, Thomas Wayne had cursed his own compassion, finally seeing it as the ambiguous vehicle that it was. For once the funeral was over and the lawyers had all left, I was all that was residual of a world burnt to ash, and you were vulnerable... but  _he_  was no longer around to remind me of my shame.   
  
So the beast in my chest thrived, even through the years you were gone, lost to both the world and yourself. Even when they had declared you dead, the beast within me thrived.   
  
I was not surprised when you returned, a man, ready to devote yourself to a life battling darkness. You are after all, your father’s son. The  _true_  surprise was to look upon you and all the changes that the years have wrought upon you, and find that my old feelings- if one could even call them that- remained. For you were no longer a child, Master Bruce; no bud-like innocence bloomed on peach-fresh skin. Only rawness remained, though you would always be beautiful.  
   
It was then that I allowed myself to believe, for the first time, that I could be something more than the sum of my shame.   
  
You began to rebuild the Wayne legacy in the image of yourself, taking the best of your father’s lofty ideals and fusing them with your steel-cold rage for justice. You fashioned Batman out of this union.   
  
While I stayed in the shadows, where I belonged.   
  
My sustenance was the facets of yourself that you showed only to me. Not to Lucius Fox, not even to Rachel Dawes. The side of Bruce Wayne that emerges when I stitch up his wounds, or catch him brooding into long-cold coffee- that was mine, and mine alone. Because in the end, love is one thing; but trust is something else all altogether.   
  
Then the clown came, and blasted it all sky high.   
  
Like a moth of flame, you raced to each bonfire, while I vexed and worried within the gilded confines of Wayne Manor.   
  
It took me some time to realise that what you really wanted was to be burned, to cleanse yourself of your sins and your sadness, most of all of your rage. I never saw, because I was too busy believing the best of you. So you went out looking for bigger fires, hoping for a cleansing flame that would purge the contamination within.   
  
I have never censored you for the darkness that you choose to surround yourself in, many though my misgivings were. I have never reproved you the scabs that you made as you scratched obsessively at your scars. Tthough I will admit my motive are partly self-seeking; and your weaknesses made you more reachable to me, makes my own demons seem less monstrous.   
  
And in the end I did break my promise to your father by standing back, and allowing you to enter these shadowy lands.   
  
But to fight it, Master Wayne! Not to embrace it.   
  
Bonfires are elemental things, and a matchstick is easy to strike. It’s  _withholding_  the temptation that withers you, that takes up the most effort of living.   
  
All these years of self-denial, only to see you give yourself to this... jester. This tuppence parody of what you deserve.   
  
 _I_  could have been your bonfire, Master Wayne.   
  
If you had wanted a monster, all you had to do was turn around.   
  
* 


End file.
